Doll Parts
by Lila2
Summary: The hardest lies to tell are the ones Alison tells herself.


**Title:** "Doll Parts"

**Author:** Lila

**Rating:** PG-13

**Character/Pairing:** Alison

**Spoiler:** "Roman Holiday"

**Length:** one-shot

**Summary: **The hardest lies to tell are the ones Alison tells herself.

**Disclaimer: **Not mine, just borrowing them for a few paragraphs.

**Author's Note:** Another GG entry because I still have a million other things to do, but I'm enjoying the end of my writer's block too much to stop. I hope you enjoy. Title and cut courtesy of Hole.

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**I. I fake it so real I am beyond fake. **

True story – Alison has always known "Rosewood" wasn't really about her.

Rufus recorded the song when Dan was three and Jenny was six months, and the only things she smelled like were baby formula and throw up. She wore perfume, on the rare occasion she and Rufus could find a babysitter who didn't wear flannel and showered more than once a week and didn't mourn a dying genre, but it never smelled anything like sandalwood or roses.

Still, when Rufus slipped the first copy into her palm and told her he'd immortalized her on record for eternity, she'd pasted on the same smile she'd worn the night she'd met Lily Van der Woodsen.

She remembers blinking as her eyes locked on blonde hair and blue eyes and references to a forgotten interest in photography, and when she can focus through the haze she remembers feeling like she was looking at a more polished version of herself.

Her dark nail polish had been chipped and her blonde hair had been in need of a cut, and while they were visiting an avant-garde art exhibit she'd been acutely aware that the hem of her babydoll dress hit too high on her bare thighs and even though she'd polished them that morning, there was no place for her steel-toed boots beside calfskin pumps.

She remembers the hiss beside her ear as Rufus' breath disappeared inside his throat and the beat of his heart thumping erratically in his chest. She'd pushed forward, so her back wasn't resting against a heart beating for another woman, and pressed a clay-roughened hand into Lily's gilded palm.

She remembers smiling, smiling so big and bright the corners of her mouth nearly cracked, and the only thing that kept that grin plastered across her face was watching Lily's lip tremble in her own fragile smile. Rufus's voice had been squeaky and shaky, and she'd felt his heart jump through the six inches of space between them when his lips formed Lily's name.

Later, as they walked to the subway, Lily Van der Woodsen had appeared in search of a cab, a wisp of blonde hair floating around pale cheeks made rosy by the cold. She'd been too aware of the bronzer she'd streaked across her cheeks to remind Rufus of the California sunshine that he loved, the way her upstate accent was crumbling into something flatter and higher, the gaping space between she and Rufus as Lily brushed past them.

She remembers silken blonde hair trailing across her cheek and fine cashmere brushing the tips of her fingers through her torn gloves, and a hint of sandalwood and roses catching in the chilly air.

True story – she wore the same brittle smile when Rufus proposed to her later that night.

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**II. It stands for a knife for the rest of my life. **

True story – the first time Alison slept with Rufus she wasn't sure he slept with her.

She remembers the way his hands shook as they skimmed her skin and the look on his face when he came, like he didn't quite understand what was happening, like he didn't recognize the girl who made it happen.

Later, she'd stood in the dingy florescent light of his bathroom trying not to think what was festering on the tile under her bare feet. She'd studied the taunt limbs and flat stomach and the way her pale blonde hair spilled halfway down her back from a dark center part. She'd thought about the guitarist from Pearl Jam who'd tried to buy her a beer after the gig that night, wondered if he'd fuck her with his eyes open and his mind focused on the girl beneath him. She'd wondered how she could love Rufus and he could claim to love her and she still couldn't be sure she was the one he really wanted.

When he held her in his arms that night, her head awkwardly pillowed by the dip in his chest, she'd whispered words of love in his ear and fallen asleep believing them to be true.

True story – Alison sleeps with Rufus hundreds, thousands of times over the next twenty years and she's never quite sure he knows it's her.

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**III. They really want you but I do too.**

True story – Alison has always known her children weren't hers to keep.

Dan cried the first time she held him in her arms. The nurses told her it was normal, he was a newborn after all, but wasn't it her voice that had lulled him to sleep all those months? Hadn't her body protected him, nurtured him, kept him safe? Wasn't she the one to give him life?

When Rufus held his son, cradled him with fingers calloused from working guitar strings and pressed him tightly to a heart Alison was never quite sure belonged to her, Dan had stopped crying and watched his father with wide blue eyes. They would change, eventually, as most babies' do, but in that moment all that existed was Rufus staring into blue eyes that could have belonged to anyone. Alison's eyes were blue too, like deep, dark denim – Rufus sang a cover of "Forever in Blue Jeans" at Dan's christening and dedicated it to her – but it didn't change the look in his eyes when he lifted them from his firstborn and smiled at her. She hadn't seen that look since the night of the art exhibit when a hint of sandalwood and roses had caught on the air.

When Jenny is born, all tufts of white-blonde hair and big blue eyes, she doesn't bother to look in her husband's eyes because she doesn't want to see what will be staring back at her.

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Years later, when Dan blows in on a gusty Thanksgiving morning, apple pie in place of pumpkin, raving about blonde girls with self-destructive streaks, her vision clouds and all she can see is shiny, pale blonde hair and all she can smell is sandalwood and roses and all she can hear is Rufus' heart beating at a pace she doesn't recognize.

Three days later she moves to Hudson to work on her art. She tells herself it's temporary; she maybe even believes it.

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A year later, when Jenny shows up on her doorstep, blonde hair blowing around her face and tears brimming in her blue eyes, she sees her lie for what it really is.

She packs up her house and her art and her dreams and she goes home to her family. She and Rufus make love like old times and his hands don't hesitate over the curves of muscle and bone and she maybe even believes it's for real this time.

A month later, she goes shoe shopping for her ungrateful daughter and it's like falling back in time. Her hair is shorter, but it's the wrong shade of blonde; her clothes are the correct muted tones, but the fabric isn't costly enough; her smile is plastered across her face, and it's the same brittle curve of an expression a half-second from shattering. She exchanges pleasantries with Lily, catches the hint of Coco in the air, and avoids looking at her daughter the way she avoided looking at her husband the day she was born.

When she walks away, she catches them at the shoe counter out of the corner of her eye, and their blonde heads meld together over a pair of five hundred dollar slingbacks. On the cab ride home, heart clenching in her chest, her only consolation is that Rufus didn't see it.

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A week later, Dan shows her his acceptance letter for The New Yorker and she's never been more proud of her firstborn. Later, when he's out chasing down a Christmas gift for Lily's daughter, she steals into his room and reads the story. It doesn't take long to figure out that 10-08-05 is the day he met Serena Van der Woodsen and brought the past to knock down their door.

She thinks about the ultimatum she issued and the agony in Rufus' eyes as he chose her – for the first time in his life he chose her – and the guilt clogging Jenny's when she chose a Van der Woodsen over her mother. For half a second, she wonders what choice her eldest would make. Her eyes cloud as they trip over the words of his story and she knows which side he'll choose.

True story – Alison has always known she had her children on borrowed time. She just never thought time would run out so quickly.

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**IV. I love him so much he just turns to hate.**

True story – Alison always knew she loved a man who didn't love her back.

On Christmas Eve, when her babies are running themselves ragged to make a Van der Woodsen happy, she knows it has to end. When she breaks the news to Rufus, she doesn't have the energy to smile. She's tired of masks and she's tired of lies and she wants to know what it's like to be happy.

They talk and talk, and then she says the words: "It's over."

"Yeah, it is," he says and she doesn't know what hurts more, that he said the words at all or how little time it took them to spill from his lips. Twenty years of marriage and two children and she wanted him to fight for her, just the tiniest bit; she almost doesn't recognize the relief when she looks in his eyes and isn't afraid of what's staring back.

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True story – Alison always knew she'd meet a man who loved her back.

The day she goes back to Hudson, Alex is waiting for her beside her red door with questions in his eyes. Will you stay? Will you go? Do you love them more than you love me? She kneels down before him, cold and snow seeping through the thin denim of her jeans, and she looks right into Alex's eyes. All she sees is her own smile – a real smile – staring back and she knows she'll never leave.

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